Putin and the evil legacy

Putin argue like this: We are prepared to kill innocent civilian citizens with poisonous gas in order to continue kill innocent civilians in Chechnya. The killing, lying and cheating on facts and information is a clear continuation from the time of the "evil empire".

The Physicians for Human Rights have made a report about the last time the Alpha units used toxic gas in Tbilisi on the "Bloody Sunday". The short version goes like this (The long version can be ordered on, www.phrusa.org/publications/ussr.html):

"On Sunday, April 9, 1989, troops from the Soviet Ministries of Defence and Interior use dentrenching spades and toxic gas to break up the peaceful demonstration of 8,000 to 10,000 people in Tbilisi, Soviet Georgia. Sixteen people were known to have been killed on the scene. Another four people later died from injuries sustained that day. Hundreds of people were injured and admitted to hospitals in later weeks. At the invitation of Dr. Andrei Sakharov and the Minister of Public Health for Soviet Georgia, PHR provided technical expertise in assessing the possibility that toxic gas had been used against the crowd. The PHR team concluded that, in addition to the use of one or two lacrimator agents (CN or CS), the Soviet troops probably used a third agent, chloropicrin, to suppress the demonstration. The report describes the collection of scientific evidence of the use of this gas and documents that dozens of patients in the hospital suffered from the physical effects of psychologi
cal trauma or, as termed by the team, "catastrophe reaction syndrome.""

To this could be added that the commander of the Soviet troops in Transcaucasia General Igor Rodionov, nicknamed "the butcher of Tbilisi", categorically denied that the poisonous gases had been used against the demonstrators. The refusal of the Soviet military authorities to release to the Georgian medical community any information about the use of toxic agents against the demonstrators hindered the physicians who were attempting to treat the thousands of people complaining of a confusing array of symptoms.

The lack of respect for human life in Russia is devastating and really worth a study like Norbert argued. It seems that we now have two presidents who use killing gas against their own citizens in the world today, Saddam the murderer of innocent Kurds have been joined by his supporter in UN, Putin. Not only George Orwell had to be brought in to understand but also a Russian is needed. The total lack of respect for every single human life that Joseph Brodsky found in Russian history have once again sadly been proved. As the conference in Denmark hopefully will show, peace and respect for human life must be a cornerstone in both Russia and Chechnya. This could not be negotiable for any part or for any reason.